Drivers of F1

2009 season of the FIA F1 championship has been a revelation to me and it is not because of the loathsome F1 politics!

The current season saw the rule changes unprecedented since 1984 and this led to a reshuffle of the racing field. The once Ferrari and Mclaren dominated grid now saw Brawn GP and Red Bull Racing leading the pack. Ferrari and Mclaren found themselves languishing at the back when the season started and now only after half the season is gone are starting to show some signs of recovery. Even now their gap with Brawn GP and Red Bull Racing is huge.

But what has surprised me?

With a fan growing up in the era of Schumacher’s Ferrari, I had a feeling that their exists a huge difference between the driving capability of drivers in the lesser cars. This era in which i became huge fan of the sport included drivers like Button and Webber. But after witnessing events of this season with Button having a cushion of 21 points on WDC to his nearest rival and Webber claiming his first win after being a 130 races veteran, I am first to claim that I was wrong. There might be a few drivers who can’t cut it out at this stage of racing (Seb Bourdais anyone?) but most of the drivers in F1 today (or any given year) can win races and even challenge for driver’s championship given a right kind of machinery. It is a driver with his machine and his team only to win a race or title.

We see in current grid drivers like Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso as also-rans, who are all previous champions. Also, we see also-rans of previous years like Jenson Button and Mark Webber ready to make their mark on the sport.

I totally believe that with a right car Jarno Trulli can be a WDC champion, or Adrian Sutil who came so close 3 times to be in points with his Force India car or Sebastian Buemi or Robert Kubica……